Month: April 2017

This weekend’s March for Science felt familiar, but not because of its similarity to the Women’s March. A lot of the placards felt like S. Harris cartoons.

Sidney Harris, who generally signs his cartoons with his first initial, is one of those guys I read religiously when I was in physics and then subsequently forgot about. But there’s a real resonance in his cartoons about climate change.

It’s nice to see some love for the First Lady of Song. Her contributions to popular song are eternal, due largely to the Songbook series, but for me I’ll remember her as a fellow child of Newport News (aside: what was it with that city in the early 20th century and jazz vocalists? Pearl Bailey also spent her childhood there) and as a great interpreter of song, period. For proof, have a listen to her version of the Beatles’ “Got to Get You Into My Life.”

Just got done driving my family around Washington, DC for a few days. Slowly trying to reenter working life, but it’s challenging to focus for more than a few minutes at a time, which is about the length of time my kids will let me focus on anything.

But there were some cool things along the way, including what may now be my favorite room in the Smithsonian, the exhibit room inside the Castle (above and below). Note the Concorde model below and the flock of birds above.

When I was a little kid—I mean, probably seven or eight years old—we were visiting my grandparents in Paradise, PA. My Pop-Pop liked to play music for us, generally the radio but often a tape that he had gotten from his work at Spectrum Fidelity Magnetics. And this time he had a kid’s album, “The Colors of My Rainbow.”

That album, by a kid’s musician named Joe Wayman, squirmed its way into my psyche through repeated listenings in cassette players at home, Pop-Pop’s, and in our car on long trips between Newport News and Paradise. Having grown up on a diet of my mom’s kid’s music, much of which dated to her days as a music teacher in the 1950s and 1960s (think “Tubby the Tuba”), the smart-assery around the edges of “Recipe for Red” and “Mellow Yellow Coot” appealed to me. But maybe most of all, the melancholy in “Brown’s the Saddest Color” hit the bullseye of my soul. I still remember the lyrics to many of the songs.

Other than half remembered snatches of the songs floating through my head, I wasn’t able to find the music. But then this morning I decided to Google the lyrics I remembered. And there was a full playlist of the album on YouTube (misattributed to “Joe Hayman”). And a Creative Commons archive of the album on the Internet Archive. And now I’m happily listening to the dated production and less-good-than-remembered singing and refreshing my memory.

We have a rare family vacation next week. We’ll be taking the kids to visit some family and then to spend a few days exploring our nation’s capitol. There’s a part of me that will always be excited to visit the seat of our government and of so much of America’s identity, and to expose my kids to our history as well as all the riches of the American Museum of Natural History.

That’s not to say that I don’t feel any uneasiness about the trip. My feelings toward our government are definitely tarnished by the current occupant of our nation’s highest office and the horrific car wreck of an administration he’s surrounded himself with. But this will be, I hope, a good opportunity to push reset on some of those feelings and just take in the reminder that we can be better than we are.

Today was the first day (the “unclosing”) of Veracode’s semiannual Hackathon. In ordinal numbers, this is the eleventh one we’ve done, though the actual name is Hackathon 10 5/7. (It’s ok; we’re all mad here.)

I am looking back at all the hacks I’ve done over the last few years and it’s fascinating what they reveal. Programming hacks, though I haven’t been a professional developer in 17 years. Musical hacks, though I’m usually neither a bluegrass musician (though I am when our CFO is leading the band) nor a theremin player. Presentation hacks. Writing hacks.

I think what’s fascinating about the way that Veracode does Hackathons is that it’s an opportunity for us all to reach deep and explore some under-exercised facet of our true selves. Or failing that, to sew one on and see if we can make it thrive.

Yesterday’s post on the Cabell House is a fiber in an ongoing thread of an investigation to understand the earliest members who took part in the Virginia Glee Club. We know from the January 1871 issue of the Virginia University Magazine that “those gentlemen rooming at the Cabell House, and in that neighborhood, have made great efforts, and we understand tolerably successful ones, to form a Glee Club.” We seek now to understand who “those gentlemen” are.

More fools, we. As one digs deeper into the history of the house, one turns up a handful (only) of references to it in official University and Charlottesville publications. One of those identified a Miss Pattie J. Daffan as the proprietor of the Cabell House. Another publication placed her as the proprietor of a boarding house at 852 West Main Street, only a block from where the Cabell House was supposed to be. It seems pretty clear that this was the actual address of the Cabell House.

Why, one may ask, is this exciting? Well, partly because it’s important to know where to pay homage to our as-yet-unknown founding fathers. But also because the property between 9th and 10th on West Main Street is a Hampton Inn, but the property at 852 West Main Street is World of Beer (as well as apartments). Surely a World of Beer is a better location for our Glee Club than a motel.

Notes from Under Grounds: On View Now: “Jorge Luis Borges: Author, Editor, Promulgator.” Exhibit at the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia of the works of Borges, including books that he published, translated, or wrote prefaces to. Unsurprisingly the collection includes “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “Orlando.” Looking forward to Nora Benedict’s forthcoming in-depth post about the exhibit.